


Memory

by intravenusann



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: (aftermath), F/M, M/M, Original Character(s), Pensieves, Politics, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 12:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11555232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/intravenusann
Summary: In 1946, Credence Barebone looks into his pensieve.





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emmel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmel/gifts).



> This very short fic include nuclear weapons, a pregnancy, and an off-screen execution.

Late autumn frost rests on the few unlucky leaves still clinging to the trees in Central Park. The air tastes cleaner here for the cold. He doesn’t mind the cold much. **  
**

Even though he has no scarf and no decent hat. His badly shorn hair leaves both his neck and ears exposed. Both are bloodlessly white from the cold, just like the ends of his fingers. He owns gloves — one pair in black leather. They fit him better than most things he wears. They cost nearly as much as his shoes, however, so his Ma holds onto them.

If he kept them, she says, he would only lose them.

But he doesn’t mind the cold.

A man walks beside him who wears brilliantly shined shoes with tall heels to keep above the frozen mud and spats to protect the black leather.

His own shoes have a hole working open on the sole and water stains on the toes. He cannot afford to shine them but twice a year. His Ma says the polish costs too much. He would rather give his pennies to his youngest sister than a bootblack anyway.

“Aren’t you cold?” the man asks.

“No, sir,” he says. “The afternoon is rather pleasant compared to this morning.”

His words travel on the clouds his breath makes in the air.

His jaw aches from the effort it takes to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Oh, to be young again,” the man says. “I have a coat and this cold snap still makes me miserable.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he says.

“No need to apologize,” the man tells him. “Unless you can control the weather.”

The man turns and looks at him.

He watches the man’s face in tiny glimpses from the corner of his eye. His gaze keeps sinking to his feet.

Between the man’s heels and his bad posture, they stand the same height.

“You can’t control the weather, can you?” the man asks him.

He opens his mouth and his breathing hitches in his chest.

The man’s hand comes up to rest on his shoulder. He smiles.

“I’m only teasing, Credence,” the man says.

He looks at the man’s mouth, shaped like the bow of Jonathan, and the pointed arrowhead of his tooth.

When the man takes his hand away, the space he leaves behind on Credence’s shoulder has turned warm as spring.

“Do you mind if we keep walking?” the man asks. “I find I’m warmer if I keep moving.”

“I don’t mind at all, Mr. Graves.”

Credence pulls away from the pensieve and watches his memory disappear into silver mist the color of frost on autumn leaves.

He cannot be entirely certain, of course, but he has revisited this memory often. Given the difference in times, Credence chooses to believe that this Mr. Graves was the authentic version. While he walked in Central Park that day, his murderer was blowing up the parliament building in London.

“Director?”

Credence looks up to find Patricia Palomo peering into his office. The pensieve vanishes from his hands in a cloud of black smoke.

“Pardon me, Director,” Patricia says. “But your portkey is coming up in an hour and the midwest branch is asking about the situation with the Lake Superior sirens.”

“Thank you Miss Palomo,” he says.

She draws back from the door, then hesitates.

“You’re not gonna let them actually go through with that plot to send a hunting party after the girls,” she says. “Are you?”

“Of course not, Miss Palomo,” Credence says. “The three sisters have lived there longer than most of us have been alive. Humans are the ones intruding on their peace, not the other way around.”

Patricia smiles. Her front teeth are a little too big for her mouth and she has dimples in both cheeks. Her dark hair has been curled into the fat sausage shapes all the ladies in the office seem to prefer, but they look best on her.

“You know, Director Barebone,” she says. “I’m so glad I work for you and none of the earlier directors. You’re just the nicest guy who could ever have your job.”

“That’s extremely kind of you to say, Miss Palomo,” he says.

She giggles.

“Thank you for reminding me about my portkey,” he says.

“You’re welcome, sir!”

Twenty years ago, almost to the day, Credence killed a senator, then his mother and sister. He didn’t even look for his youngest sister until he returned to New York in 1937. His certification from Beauxbatons was revealed as a forgery when he was appointed in 1945, though the school was generous enough to offer him an honorary one for his service.

On two different days last summer, the No-Majs dropped two bombs that turned cities into ashes and bodies into shadows.

President Saya Yu-Fontaine was the one who handed him the intelligence MACUSA gathered on the project as soon as his clearances were approved by the rest of the Congress.

“Look at the name. Seems your friend’s little rain storm didn’t work on everyone,” she had said.

It might not be true.

But Credence could empty his whole head into a pensieve and he’d still probably never be able to count how many lives he’s taken and chewed up with sharp, black teeth.

Nice is not a word he would call himself.

A familiar face greets him at the Office of Trans-Atlantic Transportational Magics and Coordination.

He takes off his hat and leans down to kiss the cheek of a woman who once ordered him dead.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Seraphina Picquery says, “but I coordinated my departure with yours.”

“Not at all, ma’am,” he says. “I hate this method of travel.”

“Me too,” she says.

“It’s always a pleasure spending time with someone who hates the same things you do,” Credence says.

Seraphina’s smile doesn’t reach the crow’s feet around her eyes.

Credence offers her his arm and she tucks the gold fingers of her artificial hand around his elbow.

“A pleasure and a privilege,” she says. “Thank you, Credence.”

They take hold of the portkey together.

The next horrible instant they arrive in the Ministry of Magic’s containment area at the palatial Autorité Centrale de la Magie headquarters outside Reims.

Looking at it today, swarming with witches and wizards from every corner of the planet, Credence wonders if the burning rubble that once stood here ever existed. Maybe he just imagined the war.

Magic has always made him feel a bit insane.

“Credence!” someone calls out.

The last time Credence saw Porpentina Goldstein, she had shorter hair. Also, she wasn’t pregnant.

A step behind her, Newton Scamander moves like a man in a trance. The softness of his expression is the moon gazing at the sun.

Credence wonders if he will ever feel that way about another person.

“It’s always good to see you,” she says. “And Madame Picquery, I didn’t expect to see you here!”

“Because I was denied a judge’s seat?” Seraphina says.

“Well,” Tina says. “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, maybe?”

“The way I see it,” Seraphina says, “I didn’t have to do the hard work but I still benefit from the results.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Tina says.

“My congratulations, by the way,” Seraphina says. “To you and Newt both.”

“Thank you, Madame,” Tina says. “I was starting to worrying I’d pop before the trials were done with. Probably not a great idea to bring an infant to an execution.”

“It hasn’t been decided whether or not he’ll be executed,” Credence says.

But he knows what he’s praying for.

Credence has never been a kind or faithful man, but that afternoon his prayer is answered.

Seraphina grins and pats his back with her golden hand. Tina hugs him with her belly pressed against his body. Even Newt hugs him.

“It’s the end of another adventure, in a way,” Newt says. His lopsided smile does not reach his blue-green eyes. Credence looks at the freckle on his upper lip. He thinks of survival more than adventure, but that’s the difference between them.

“Let me know when the baby comes,” he tells Newt. “I’ll come to visit as soon as work allows.”

“America’s beings need you,” Newt says. “Director Barebone.”

The smile on his lips softens, but so do his eyes.

“You’re really making a difference,” Newt says.

“I’ve barely had the job a year,” Credence says.

“It’s not just what you do,” Tina butts in. “Sorry Newt, but Credence — it’s  _who_  you are.”

“Thank you,” he says. “Tina, Newt.”

He kisses both their cheeks.

Credence doesn’t stay for the execution; he takes a portkey back to New York City and arrives in the dark. Soot-stained snow stands in piles on the sidewalks. The toes of his shoes shine under the street lamps. His white scarf hangs loose on his shoulders.

Credence walks from the Woolworth Building to his apartment on Fifth Avenue.

It’s a long damn walk and he’s cold every step of the way.

He turns on the lights in his penthouse with the snap of his fingers, but his breath hangs wet in the air. He doesn’t turn on the heat.

Instead, he pours a drink and thinks about how much his old dead Ma would hate that. He threw her against a wooden beam. The crack still echoes in his dreams and rattles the runes of his pensieve sometimes.

He only takes a sip before he feels too ridiculous to continue — drinking cold whisky in a cold apartment in one of the nicest buildings in New York City. Credence waves his hand and the air warms around him. His black coat and black jacket slide off his broad shoulders. His tie slips free from his neck like a poorly tied noose.

When Credence first met the man, Saya’s Director of Magical Security had asked him, “Whose funeral are you dressed for, eh, Barebone?”

“Either mine or yours,” Credence had replied as easily as breathing.

He owns more black clothes than a professional widow.

“How can something like that even hold a job?” a witch from New Mexico had asked at his confirmation hearing. “Let alone in our government. It makes a mockery of MACUSA.”

Growing up like he did, praying some night that the Lord would just take him in his sleep so he wouldn’t have to live through another dawn, Credence Barebone never anticipated the twists and turns his life has taken. He’s got magic. His movements in Europe, for better or worse, got him money. President Saya handed him authority on a platter. Now a tribunal of judges has given him a final vengeance.

He never could have expected this.

Credence puts the bottle of whisky back in the cabinet by hand and goes to wash his glass. There’s something steadying about doing things without his magic. It makes him feel like there’s blood in his veins instead of charcoal.

He dries his hands and rolls his cuffs back down his arms, ready for bed if not sleep.

The lamps in Credence’s apartment sputter and go out all at once.

With the sound of rending garments and great lamentations, the space at the center of his parlor breaks open into a darkness so great that no light could ever fill it. A million exploding suns could not form a spark in that much dark.

Out of it, falls a man. He staggers and sways.

The darkness closes itself like an abscessed wound. The lights come back on.

The man in Credence’s apartment has two inches of beard on his face — all grey and black hairs. His hair is full of grey. His brow is heavy until he looks up at Credence.

He stumbles forward and every step takes a decade off Credence’s age. Hands brush the sides of Credence’s face. They clutch at his shoulders.

“Mr. Graves?” Credence asks.

“Credence,” the man says, in a voice he hasn’t heard in twenty years.

Credence watches the man’s eyes roll back until there’s nothing but whites. He catches Percival Graves by the elbows and it’s only good fortune that keeps them both from collapsing to the floor. Instead, Credence gently moves the man to the nearest sofa. His body lies limp on the cushions.

It’s only after he’s cast every disenchantment that he knows, that Credence allows himself to feel anything at all.

His lower lip trembles then and his flesh begins to flake like ashes.

In the flames of a fire-call, President Saya looks incredibly composed for the late hour.

“Saya,” Credence says. “I… I’m having a small problem.”

“What sort of problem?” she asks without blinking.

“Has Seraphina returned from France yet?” he asks.

“Barebone, that’s not an answer to my question,” Saya responds.

“I need to speak with Seraphina as soon as possible,” he says. “I think I have Percival Graves in my apartment.”

The president knows at least seven languages well enough to be conversational in them, but she responds to him with five English words.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s.tumblr.com.
> 
> Credence isn't the Director of Magic Security, just to be clear, and the WWII era president of MACUSA is a Japanese American witch because I said so.


End file.
